RALPH BUNCHE AND GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY
by Professor Charles P. Henry, University of California-Berkeley

Federal Judge and former Bunche student Bill Bryant said of Ralph Bunche, "He could see a long way down the block and then he could see around the corner a little bit." I believe Judge Bryant's insight on Bunche's social vision is true, especially in the field of human rights. In particular, I want to argue against the common perception that Bunche's main goal was the establishment of an international organization such as the UN. After all, this was the vision of a number of political leaders after World War I, most notably Woodrow Wilson. I believe Bunche saw around the corner and viewed the UN as a means, one means, to a larger end. That end was what he called an "international mind" or today what we call "global civil society."
In 1900, three years before Bunche's birth, there were 26 Esperanto (universal language) clubs in the world. By the onset of World War I in 1914 there were 1800 such clubs. These clubs, promoting a common universal language, were an early expression of the desire for an international or global community. A number of religious organizations also promoted transnational social and cultural activities like the YWCA founded in 1894, and the social gospel movement was reaching its peak during Bunche's youth. Even the sports world reflected a growing global consciousness with the revival of the Olympic games and the founding of the International Olympic Committee in 1894.
It was the more sinister forces of economic globalization, territorial imperialism, and war, that provided the biggest boost to internationalism. Following the Great War, contacts expanded outside Europe and North America. The Institute for Pacific Relations, of which Bunche was a D.C. branch member, for example, was formally created in 1925 from an initiative launched by YMCA-linked Christian leaders committed to a cross-national exchange of ideas on a broad range of issues such as inter-racial relations and security in the Pacific.
From his earliest public remarks, we see the influence of this new internationalism on Ralph Bunche. In his 1926 speech entitled "That Man May Dwell in Peace," UCLA student Bunche proposes an antidote for the world "war-poisoning" that had taken 23 million lives. It rests on two basic principles: "International Organization,” involving every nation of the world and the full development of the "International Mind or Will." Using the rivalries of the original thirteen American colonies as an example of what can be overcome, Bunche suggests a universal political society in which each nation would retain its individuality, its nationality and extensive freedom of action and autonomy within its own domain; yet maintain an abiding consciousness of membership in the more significant international society. But, says Bunche emphatically, "international organization is not enough! World Courts, world leagues, world pacts of all sorts, are futile unless solidly backed by an international citizenry resolutely demanding peace and willing to sacrifice for its realization." Bunche informs us that psychology and sociology demonstrate that human nature is infinitely modifiable. That it is possible to affect a comprehensive change in human nature. Therefore he advocates social education centering about a new concept of the human self as a member of a world society.
A year later, in his commencement address at UCLA, Bunche elaborates this notion of social education. He says that if the educational systems of the world are to fulfill their proper obligations to society, they must develop and give the world socially valuable men. Not intellectuals alone but men whose personality includes the visional dimension or fourth dimension of personality. This fourth dimension, call it "bigness," soulfulness, spirituality, imagination, altruism, vision, or what you will, says Bunche, is the quality which gives full meaning and true reality to others. It enables man to understand and to love his fellows.
Bunche would remain consistent throughout his life in his belief that ultimate progress toward human fulfillment lay in the cultivation of what philosopher Richard Rorty calls human empathy or sentimentality and not simply international organization. In his Nobel address, Bunche states that humans have harnessed nature and developed great civilizations but never learned how to live well with each other. Our values are materialistic while our spirituality has lagged behind. Once again he stresses the importance of international education but admits that the process is gradual and the procedures of the UN unavoidably complex and tedious. Even more forcefully in a 1953 "Armistice Day" speech at Town Hall in New York, Bunche says:
"It is not, really, the UN as an organization to which I am devoted but rather the basic ideals and objectives to which it is committed and which it perseveringly strives to implement. For how can civilization and mankind survive and progress unless we have peace; unless people are free; unless there is hope for progressively improving living standards for all people; unless there is morality and justice -- international as well as national; unless racial and religious bigotries are dominated and we can cultivate a true spirit of brotherhood among men."

The basic ideals and objectives Bunche strove for form the foundation of what we now call global civil society.

[The Ralph Bunche Centenary runs August 7, 2003 - August 2004.]